As you say, it'll probably look better in the flesh. Picture sometimes don't do car's justice. Merc dealer did say that Mercedes were changing all the suspension settings for the A35 AMG. So maybe the car I test drove was an early car? A few people have mentioned the harsh ride, so I'm not alone in my judgement. But you would think anyway that the A35 suspension would be different to the A45, just like S3 / RS3.
Those seats do look incredible. It's a shame you can't order them on the A35. But I guess those seats are kept for the best cars?
As you say, and £50k it does look one hell of a bargain, given how much you'd need to spend on something exotic that would even have a chance in leaving the A45s behind.
I did actually think that the car does carry more presence in real life than the photo's convey.
You don't get a sense of the width of the car in the photo's - the 45 is 50mm wider than the stndard A class.
That accomodates the bonnet with the 2 bulges (which really do add another dimension to the look of the car IMO) and the flared wheel arches.
It looks very beefy and purposeful in its stance.
The suspension is set quite low so no big arch gap which I like and the unique design 19" alloys with the huge brake calipers look great.
On the side you get the very nice black trim on the lower part of the sill.
And that panamercica grill is what really drew me to this car in the 1st place - it just looks spectacular and looks so mean and impressive.
At the rear, you have the 4 exhaust pipes all in black and each with AMG stamped on them which is a very nice touch.
The rear spoiler also has an added aero lip which again just accentuates the look in a subtle but stylish way.
A lot of attention to detail.
But yes I am more than happy with the suspension - they possibly have re configured it from earlier cars.
I generally have firm feeling suspension having had a TTS and RS3 previously and this is certainly on a similar footing with them.
I'm still learning things day to day with the tech and controls inside the car.
You can change things bu touching the screens / using the touch pad / or using the 2 micro touch pads on the steering wheel.
With the 45 you also get extra buttons on the steering which you can individually configure as short cuts for engine mode, drive select, start stop, dynamics etc.
The Hey Mercedes thing I thought would be a gimmick too, but its very accurate and clever ....
You can adjust heating / cooling temp, seat heating, sat nav routes, telephone, radio, select tracks from the media player by Artist even !